A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures
Full Title: A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures
Author / Editor: Eric Schwitzgebel
Publisher: MIT Press, 2019
Review © Metapsychology Vol. 23, No. 48
Reviewer: Bob Lane
Let me start by quoting Professor Schwitzgebel’s preface:
Preface
“I enjoy writing short philosophical reflections for broad audiences. Evidently, I enjoy this immensely: Since 2006, I’ve written more than a thousand such pieces, published mostly on my blog The Splintered Mind, but also in the Los Angeles Times, Aeon, and elsewhere. This book contains fifty- eight of my favorites, revised and updated.
The topics range widely — from moral psychology and the ethics of the game of dreidel to multiverse theory, speculative philosophy of consciousness, and the apparent foolishness of Immanuel Kant. There is no unifying thesis.
Maybe, however, there is a unifying theme. The human intellect has a ragged edge, where it begins to turn against itself, casting doubt on itself or finding itself lost among seemingly improbable conclusions. We can reach this ragged edge quickly. Sometimes, all it takes to remind us of our limits is an eight-hundred-word blog post. Playing at this ragged edge, where I no longer know quite what to think or how to think about it, is my idea of fun.
Given the human propensity for rationalization and self-deception, when I disapprove of others, how do I know that I’m not the one who is being a jerk? Given that all our intuitive, philosophical, and scientific knowledge of the mind has been built on a narrow range of cases, how much confidence can we have in our conclusions about the strange new possibilities that are likely to open up in the near future of artificial intelligence? Speculative cosmology at once poses the (literally) biggest questions that we can ask about the universe and reveals possibilities that threaten to undermine our ability to answer those same questions. The history of philosophy is humbling when we see how badly wrong previous thinkers have been, despite their intellectual skills and confidence.
Not all of my posts fit this theme. It’s also fun to use the once-forbidden word “fuck” over and over again in a chapter about profanity. And I wanted to share some reminiscences about how my father saw the world — especially since in some ways I prefer his optimistic and proactive vision to my own less hopeful skepticism. Other of my blog posts I just liked or wanted to share for other reasons. A few are short fictions.
It would be an unusual reader who enjoyed every chapter. I hope you’ll skip anything you find boring. The chapters are all freestanding. Please don’t just start reading on page 1 and then try to slog along through everything sequentially out of some misplaced sense of duty! Trust your sense of fun (chapter 47). Read only the chapters that appeal to you, in any order you like.”
Riverside, California, Earth (I hope)
October 25, 2018
As my editor points out, answering the question “What is the book about?” is key to a good review. Well, in a sense, the title captures its “aboutness”.
It is about jerks and other philosophical misadventures.
It is also about the fun of doing philosophy. It is also about the fact that philosophers are human beings living in a time and place, many employed to teach their subject in colleges and universities, and all human beings subject to human needs and foibles – with “jerkitude” a real possibility.
There are fifty-eight chapters – remember that Professor Schwitzgebel is the author of a popular Blog, “The Splintered Mind” ranging from a discussion of jerks to some analysis of well known and highly respected philosophers. In the preface he writes, It would be an unusual reader who enjoyed every chapter. I hope you’ll skip anything you find boring. I must say, I did not find any chapter boring, and most of them fun to read.
In fact, FUN is the key word to describe the book. Chapter 1 states “We need a theory of jerks.” And goes on to provide us with one in the line of similar works like Harry Frankfurt’s essay On Bullshit or Aaron James’s Assholes observing that Our taste in vulgarity reveals our values. (4) The subject matter is broad: from moral philosophy to epistemology to numerous thought experiments to memories of his father – and always with a twinkle in his eye and a forceful and active mind.
Let me share a few quotes to give you a flavour of the book’s varied ideas:
· Most of us aim only for moral mediocrity. We ought to own up to this fact.
· Should your driverless car kill you so others may live?
· An analysis of this argument in Chapter 17: 1. Someday, employers will have the technological capacity to control employee’s moods. 2. Employers will not refrain from exercising that capacity. 3. Most working-age adults will be employees. 4. Therefore, someday, most working-age adults will have employers who technologically control their moods.
· You have accidentally become a zombie robot. (126)
· “Does it matter if the story of Passover isn’t literally true?” (133)
· My father, Kirkland R. Gable (born Ralph Schwitzgebel), died on Sunday . . .Of teaching, he said that authentic education is less about textbooks, exams, and technical skills than about moving students “toward a bolder comprehension of what the world and themselves might become.” (137)
· In conjugal love, one commits to pursuing one’s major projects, even when alone, in a kind of implicit conjunction with the other. One’s life becomes a coauthored work. (146)
One of the most moving chapters is Chapter 53, a discussion of the author’s visit to Berlin in 2010 when he spent some time in the “Humboldt University library, browsing philosophy journals from the Nazi era.”
The chapter ends with a warning: “Maybe we aren’t so different, after all, from the early-twentieth-century Germans. Maybe we have our own suite of culturally shared, heinous moral defects, invisible to us or obscured by a fog of bad philosophy.” (281)
What is this book about? – How sure ought I be of the structure of the universe and my place in it? Is it just silly to permit such smidgens of doubt, based on wild, but not entirely groundless, cosmological speculation? Here I am, solid and unmistakable Eric Schwitzgebel! What could be more certain? – said the fleeting brain, the moment before it dissolved back into chaos (206)
Reading the book is like having a conversation with Eric, a long conversation with a humble and thoughtful friend, with a beer or two and a few laughs. You are left thinking about the many-faceted conversation from which you learned so much.
© 2019 Bob Lane
Bob Lane is Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at Vancouver Island University.